The Lake Geneva paddle steamer
A Belle Époque steamer between Ouchy and Geneva, with a stop at Nyon.
In 1823, a steamer driven by paddle wheels started sailing on Lake Geneva, the first Switzerland had ever had, says the Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman (CGN). Its name was the Guillaume-Tell, and the idea came from an American, Edward Church, who was then his country’s consul in France. Half a century later, in 1873, three companies that ran some eight steamers between them merged to form the CGN. Since 1888, according to Wikipedia, its shipyard has stood at Ouchy, the port of Lausanne.
Lounges on the water
Before the First World War, tourists crowded to the lakeside and the company grew with them: between 1904 and 1914 it launched seven saloon steamers. The Simplon, ordered before the war, was only finished in 1920. The Helvétie followed in 1926 and the Rhône a year later, both built with Sulzer of Winterthur: with the Simplon, says the CGN, they are the last steamers to leave a Swiss yard. In the early 1930s money was short and the company looked for ways to spend less: on the Genève, converted at Ouchy in 1933 and 1934, a diesel engine made the electricity that turned the wheels, a world first according to the CGN. In the 1950s the Italie and the Vevey gave up steam in their turn.
A listed fleet
From those years come eight boats, put into service between 1904 and 1927, that make up the company’s historic fleet today, every one of them a paddle boat. Five have stayed steamers: the Montreux, La Suisse, the Savoie, the Simplon and the Rhône. On the Vevey, the Italie and the Helvétie, electricity turns the wheels. The canton of Vaud listed the fleet as a historic monument in June 2011, and all eight boats appear in the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National Importance. In 2014 a Europa Nostra award went to the Association des amis des bateaux à vapeur du Léman (ABVL) for its work in keeping them. Each has its story: La Suisse, the flagship, was renovated in 2009; the Montreux, the eldest, was given a new steam engine in the twenty-first century, controlled remotely from the bridge; on the Rhône, the youngest, clear covers have shown the engine’s movements since 2011. Each has a page of its own, reached from the CGN’s fleet page, and the company’s archives are kept at the Musée du Léman, in Nyon.
On the map
The map has only one steamer, with no name: a white hull, two paddle wheels, a smoking funnel, no flag and no lettering. It leaves Ouchy, follows the north shore to Nyon, then crosses the lake to dock on the left bank, near Vésenaz, before Geneva’s harbour. The CGN’s real piers in Geneva are inside the harbour, at the Pâquis, Mont-Blanc, the Jardin Anglais and Eaux-Vives; the map’s keeps clear of the jet d’eau. Between Ouchy and Geneva, the map also skips the other calls on the north shore, Saint-Sulpice, Morges, Saint-Prex and Rolle, then Céligny, Coppet, Versoix and Bellevue: at its scale they would almost touch, so Nyon stands alone. The boat calls at each pier, then sails back the way it came. The lake, for its part, is drawn whole, French waters included, and the balloon can fly anywhere over it. The vehicles on the map are there for play: they keep to no timetable and don’t show where the real ones are. To travel, check the official timetables; and if you’d like the map to do more, write to us, our links are at the top of the page.
Sources: CGN, pages “Background”, “Fleet”, “La Suisse”, “Montreux”, “Rhône” and “Contact & access”; Canton of Vaud, press release of 20 March 2014 on the Europa Nostra award; Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National Importance (map.geo.admin.ch); Wikipedia, article “Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman”.